The Quirky team has unveiled Quirky 8.1 Xerus, a new release of lightweight, Puppy based GNU/Linux distribution that offers a combination of JWM and ROX-Filer as default desktop environment.
Quirky 8.1 makes use of Ubuntu 16.04 packages and is almost binary compatible with Ubuntu 16.04. This makes a bigger number of packages available for Quirky OS. At the same time, developers points out, binary compatible with Ubuntu does not mean, it is just another clone of Ubuntu. Instead it has it's own identity and existence. Also, it has some different design patterns from Ubuntu. For example, it is not using systemd as Ubuntu does and the binary files that is dependent on systemd won't work in Quirky.
With this release, Quirky also introduces an ARM edition which is specifically targeting Raspberry Pi2 and Pi3 devices. It might not work with Raspberry Pi1 devices. The ARM edition is in addition to the x86 and x64 bit images that project used to ship earlier as well.
The release announcement published in ibiblio portal says:
Quirky 8.1 makes use of Ubuntu 16.04 packages and is almost binary compatible with Ubuntu 16.04. This makes a bigger number of packages available for Quirky OS. At the same time, developers points out, binary compatible with Ubuntu does not mean, it is just another clone of Ubuntu. Instead it has it's own identity and existence. Also, it has some different design patterns from Ubuntu. For example, it is not using systemd as Ubuntu does and the binary files that is dependent on systemd won't work in Quirky.
With this release, Quirky also introduces an ARM edition which is specifically targeting Raspberry Pi2 and Pi3 devices. It might not work with Raspberry Pi1 devices. The ARM edition is in addition to the x86 and x64 bit images that project used to ship earlier as well.
The release announcement published in ibiblio portal says:
The old "April" series of Quirky is compiled totally from source packages, using T2. Quirky "Xerus" differs in that it is built with Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial Xerus binary DEBs.
It must be emphasised that the mere fact of using Ubuntu DEBs does not make Quirky a clone of Ubuntu. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Quirky Xerus behaves just like the April series, with the one difference that packages can be installed from the Ubuntu DEB repositories. The binary compatibility with Ubuntu offers a huge collection of packages, which is the main attraction of this series.
However, some functionality of Ubuntu is castrated, such as systemd. These differences may mean that some Ubuntu DEBs may not work properly (but the vast majority should be fine).